Recalling Hiroshima, 55 Years Later

In Hiroshima, Japan, thousands remembered the atomic bombing 55 years ago Sunday. People turned out for silent prayers and watched the release of 1,500 peace doves.

About 140,000 people were killed in the bombing, called "hell on earth" by the city's current mayor. Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing 70,000 people. Nine days after the Hiroshima attack, Japan surrendered, ending World War II.

Among those gathered at Hiroshima's Peace Park for a memorial ceremony near the spot where a U.S. bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, were aging survivors of the blast.

"It has been precisely 55 years since one single atomic bomb created a hell on earth," Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said in the city's annual peace declaration. "Unfortunately, our most fervent hope, to see nuclear weapons abolished by the end of this century, has not been realized."

Hiroshima announced Saturday that the names of 5,021 people who were in the city on the day of the bombing and who have died since last year's anniversary were added to a monument dedicated to the victims.

The number of names on the cenotaph in the city about 430 miles southwest of Tokyo now stands at 217,137.

At the ceremony, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori expressed his "deepest sympathy'' for those killed. "My heart also goes out to the people who to this day continue to suffer from the aftereffects of their exposure to radiation."

After the ceremony, a man crossed a security line, ran toward the lead car of Mori's motorcade and was arrested, said Masashi Watanabe, a spokesman for the Hiroshima prefectural police.

Mori, in the second car, was unharmed.

The man was not carrying a weapon, Watanabe said, and has remained silent in police custody, refusing to give his name and motive.